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Privacy plays a growing part in customer buying decisions. With every data breach, trust is eroded further.

Privacy and security are intertwined when it comes to our individual information. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the value of their personal data, so that means that businesses have to step up and do a better job of securing that data. Identity theft is the #1 fear of consumers, but for your business the risk is loss of trust and brand damage.

Since trust is the core of any transaction it’s important to know how privacy factors into your customer’s buying decisions. Research shows that almost 40% of consumers made buying decisions based upon privacy. When looking at who these people are, it was found that these individuals are aged 46-65 and have the highest incomes. But don’t rely on the business of the younger generation to supplant that once trust is lost; 27% of millenials abandoned an online purchase in the past month due to privacy or security concerns.

To mark Data Privacy Day on January 28, the following Privacy is Good for Business tips were created by privacy experts in civil-society, non-profit, government and industry and aspire to help business address the public’s growing privacy concerns:

Be open and honest about how you collect, use and share consumers’ personal information. Think about how the consumer may expect their data to be used.

Build trust by doing what you say you will do. Communicate clearly and concisely to the public about what privacy means to your organization and the steps you take to achieve and maintain privacy.

Create a culture of privacy in your organization. Explain to and educate employees about the importance and impact of protecting consumer and employee information as well as the role they play in keeping it safe.

Tuesday, January 28 is Data Privacy Day, an international effort to empower and educate people to protect their privacy and control their digital footprint. Here at AVAST, we will take the whole week to talk about privacy, and how we can make the protection of privacy and data a greater priority in our lives.

While privacy and security overlap in certain ways, they are distinct concepts. Security is defined as “freedom from danger or risk” and “precautions to guard against crime, attack, etc.” You use antivirus software to help protect against a security breach or having your personal data stolen by cybercrooks.

Privacy is “the state of being free from intrusion or disturbance in one’s private life.” This summer, we saw how closely connected these two concepts are when Edward Snowden revealed, through a security breach, how big data companies were complicit with the NSA snooping into normal people’s private lives.

AVAST Software is proud to be a champion ofData Privacy Day, celebrated every year on January 28th. We encourage you to make protecting privacy and data a greater priority. Read on to find out if you are a Privacy Pro!

Find out if you are a Privacy Pro or if you need to learn more to protect your personal information online by taking the My Privacy IQ Quiz. Take the quiz here, by submitting your answers, as a comment to this blog post. The first 5 participants who will answer all questions correctly win avast! SecureLine VPN for Android or iOS or an avast! teddy bear. Alternatively you can enter a quiz at our Facebook here. Quiz ends on Monday, February 3rd

My Privacy IQ quiz

1) Do privacy policies guarantee that your information will be kept private?